A POLITICAL ATHEIST'S LOOKS AT THE HAPPENINGS OF THE TIMES .
CLASS WARFARE, NO! IT'S CLASSIC WARFARE

Friday, December 7, 2012

IS IT ANY WONDER STUDENTS ARE SUFFERING

Here we go again. The Common Core State Standards just removed most of the fiction books that are used in literature classes from the curriculum. Old standards like "Catcher in the Rye" and "To Kill a Mockingbird " will no longer be used..In their place such barn burners as "Levels of Insulation" a manual on building insulation requirements, and "Invasive Plant Inventory"
will be added.. 70% of new courses must be non fiction, informational type material..

I would like to suggest that the folks making these new stupid laws spend a few days in the average classroom where a huge percentage of the kids can't read even after reaching their high school years. If basic reading and writing skills are not being taught (and they obviously aren't) This new program will never get off the ground..

They destroyed reading skill way back in the early 70's when they replaced normal children books with these informational pamphlets that were so boring and contained not one tidbit to catch the mind of grade school kids.. One of my son's was said to not being able to read, (a kid that we were taking to the library several times a week) to get new reading books.. so I knew something was dreadfully wrong..So I asked my son what the problem was and he explained how the program worked... You got a phamphet from a box , read it and took a test on it and if you passed you got another book. Didn't seem to be a real hard task for a genius level kid , so why aren't you doing this son.. He simply said they are all about boring subjects that I don't care or want to care about... HMMMM so I went to a teachers conference and asked some questions.. Have you ever heard my son read,, has he ever read to the classs, do you know what's in the box they are supposed to read...So I offered her a deal,, I'll go back and pick a few from the box and then you and i will read them... I did and bingo the first one was a bio of one of the first black man that was important . Don't remember the subject exactly but certaintly not of interest to a 3rd or 4 grader.

So the only obvious answer was to make some threats.. So I offered her an out .. pass my kid in the reading department, or I will blow the whistle on this stupid reading system at the next PTA meeting and let you defend it. Simple enough. Kid passed, stupid system in place.

So here we go again, good reading to dull ass instructional manuals..

I think were on to something here... Our kids are not doing well in schoold because they are being guided above the teacher level by Stupid, Stupid people.. This story could make a good joke on the Blue Collar Comedy circuit..

2 comments:

I remember the program you're talking about, it was called SRA. I don't recall having any problem with it, so it must have been one of the bros. The program was all about, supposedly, teaching you how to read faster while increasing you comprehension. It actually had a speed reading component to it. Basically, it taught me how to skim read really fast, which turned out to be useful for a journalist. Of course, by the time I took SRA, I was already a heavy reader.